|
Ari
Lauer, 61, pleaded guilty in October to 23 felony counts
including bank fraud and wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office
said in a statement. He was sentenced on Monday.
Lauer was outside counsel for DC Solar, based in Benicia in the
San Francisco Bay Area. Between 2011 and 2018, the company
marketed mobile solar generator units. The firm touted the
trailer-mounted units as being able to provide emergency power
for cellphone companies or lighting at sporting and other
events.
But executives started telling investors they could benefit from
federal tax credits by buying the generators and leasing them
back to DC Solar, which would then provide them to other
companies for their use, prosecutors said.
In reality, DC Solar sold more generators than it made, used
phony financial statements and lease contracts to conceal the
fraud and in a classic Ponzi scheme repaid early investors with
money from later ones, prosecutors said.
About 9,000 of the approximately 17,000 generators that DC Solar
claimed to have made didn't exist, according to prosecutors.
“Without the participation of Lauer, the DC Solar fraud scheme
would never have been operational," U.S. Attorney Eric Grant
said in a statement Monday.
Among those suckered by the business were Warren Buffett’s
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
DC Solar founder Jeff Carpoff was sentenced in 2021 to 30 years
in prison and ordered to pay $790.6 million in restitution for
conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
Since then, five other people, including Carpoff's wife,
Paulette Carpoff, were sentenced to prison in connection with
the fraud.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved
|
|
